Turning In Tightening Gyres

Swallowtails Zephyrs Digital Camera

Michael Sedano

Swallowtail butterflies float along the whirling margins of invisible zephyrs, flapping angling contorting their wings to escape the vortex and control a descent onto densely-flowered Lantana branches. Flocks of swallowtails live in the trees nearby. Their visits provide daily delights. These swallowtails are the giants of my garden's flying world, larger even than los colibríes coming to feed in my garden.

Today I see one swallowtail approach through the thermal curtain above the cement swimming pool deck. Hot drafts buffet the insect's unaltered course.  Riding a roller coaster current, unperturbed the swallowtail bobs and glides toward the Lantana.

Another swallowtail has lounged about the Lantana several minutes. Now the swallowtail rises, floats in air, wings unmoving, cupping unseen cushioning air, then angle to land upon a flower cluster proboscis already inserted into the floral trumpet. 

I marvel as those broad wings start vibrating and clapping together in uncontrolled ecstasy. With shivering wings, the swallowtail hops from cluster to cluster satisfying its hunger. A momentary pause, a wing stills, contorts, uplift! The swallowtail floats into a moment, a crystalline memory of flight and beauty and poetry.

I rise from a distant seat approaching slowly verifying the camera and lens settings. I want to savor the moment. And I want to make a foto that holds onto that moment of truth because it is all I need to know.

I've set the camera for its fastest speed, 1/4000s. The chip inside the Canon 6D Mark II will decide the amount of light to use and sets the lens aperture accordingly as I frame the moments and push the button. On this brilliant summer afternoon, f/9 and f/10 offer the exposure the butterflies demand.

I sit. I wait. I see them.

Seen Unseen Scenes

Among the various frustrations of an afternoon on a sunny deck is not having a camera and watching cavorting butterflies land and take off, float glide sweep through the air, land and feed, then meet with other butterflies and put on aerial shows of breath-taking beauty.

A related frustration is having the camera on-hand but the Lantana plants normally teeming with butterflies stand devoid of butterflies. Corollary desmadre is having the wrong lens on the camera.

Sabes que? None of those drawbacks came into play as I sat on my patio deck with a high quality camera body mounted with a superb 100mm macro lens. Serendipity, of course, comes into major play when seeking fotos of winged creatures in the air.

Ay de mi. There's a tenth muse, Serendipity.

And good equipment. The Canon EOS 6D Mark II exposes 3 frames a second. This gallery of helixing swallowtails 1/4000 1/4000 1/4000 slices of time thanks to the mechanical marvels of this camera body,

The Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L IS macro lens accounts for the clean clear look of these full-sunlight exposures, handheld. With light sensitivity of ISO 6400, the camera generously sets the lens between f/10 and f/8. 

Lenses don't just see what's out there, sabes? A photographer has to focus on a given area of a vista and that's what's sharp. The aperture of a lens creates a horizontal depth of focus. The point of focus will be sharp, plus there's an area of sharp focus in front of, and behind, the focal point. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the field of focus. This is an f/2.8 lens with its smallest opening f/32. Distance from lens to object influences that field of sharpness. I'm happy to have f/10 and f/8. 

These two butterflies aren't as close as they appear and they're both in marvelous focus, que no? A telephoto lens makes stuff appear closer than they fly. At f/10, and standing ten feet from the focus point, the lens gives about ten inches of good focus, so we get to see both butterflies well.

This turning and twisting moment shows the swallowtails' horizontal distance in the previous frame. This is the depth of field at this distance, wingtip to wingtip.

Serendipity smiled upon me and I was elated, seeing what was happening through the viewfinder, knowing I was capturing a casí once-in-a-lifetime sequence of photographs. How rare, and a remedy to the frustration of seeing wonders and not being properly equipped.

It develops my elation was a dramatic irony. In a few minutes, another aerial display was to be. Twice in a lifetime miracles unfold before my eyes and lens. 

Mira nomás.

Turning and turning in a tightening gyre, the pair of Giant Swallowtails, Papilio cresphontes, 

don't mind the rapid-fire clicking shutter on the camera, the human making the noise who stands ten feet away, with the entire shrub guarding the distance between them. 

Grazing at opposite sides of the Lantana, both rise in tandem from their flowers, find a cushion of air that holds them floating just above the greenery. The butterflies sense their proximity and float closer in stuttering gasps, narrowing the gap between them until a magic distance obtains. Simultaneously their outspread wings bow minutely to fill with air and both ascend rising and closing the gap, spinning, spinning like that poem about lumbering beasts. Here, gente, nothing lumbers, here is puro elegance.
 

Subtle contortions of their wings pull the flying souls into closer and closer proximity.

The swallowtails whirl around the invisible helix of the earth's DNA.

Turning and turning in the tightening gyre, things come together, only the center remains.

The center always holds. Things come together. As they should.

Last Word: A Marvel of Wings 

A remarkable work of natural wonder, this is a species of Clearwing Moth.

To some eyes, this is Hemaris thysbe, the Hummingbird Clearwing Moth. To my eyes, it's an amazing, never-before seen, winged garden soul I'm overjoyed to have captured in a moment of sublime grace.